


radionuclide

by queenofthestarrrs



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/M, Pre-Relationship, Pre-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 00:05:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5435783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofthestarrrs/pseuds/queenofthestarrrs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything is fucking red.</p>
            </blockquote>





	radionuclide

The sky blazes red when he wakes up and blazes again, he assumes, before nightfall as he’s buried himself underground with plans and blueprints and paper cups of lukewarm coffee. The dirt is a dirty brownish red, and it seems to follow him everywhere. He finds it on the cuffs of his pants, on the soles of his shoes, buried underneath his haphazardly bitten nails . And when he looks in the mirror he notices even his skin has turned a ruddy red in the harsh sun he sits under, smokes, and broods.

 

Everything in this desert is a bloodied shade of red, and he fucking hates it.

 

He supposes for a fleeting moment that he’s lucky in some kind of twisted way. There’s a war going on, his father’s colleagues are quick to remind him when he first arrives to Project Y, freshly printed degree in hand. Men, better and younger, ones with children and wives, are being shipped out by the boatload to meet fascists and Nazis and whatever else might be creeping across the continent armed with little more than a rifle and a hunting knife. Few were going to make it back. Even fewer were lucky enough not to have to go at all.

 

And as every good soldier knows, one should never push his luck.

 

But Howard is not a soldier. He’s a thinking man, you see, a scientist. He’s above the idea of luck. Luck and the idea of intervention is for the rabbis and the foolish and his mother. He dismisses them with a wave of a hand and puff of a Lucky Strike. He can’t help but think of war as one great Hemingway novel. There were great foreign lands to be explored and won. There were pretty young secretaries with soft-spoken English accents to be seduced. There was glory to be found in the great name of American ingenuity. He had better things to chase after than ways to make Hitler and Hirohito come grovelling to Frankie Roosevelt’s feet.

 

-

 

His romantic ideas of war only lapse twice.

 

The first time, it’s a Tuesday, and there’s morbid news dropped in Post Office Box 1663, Project Y’s single connection to a world beyond nuclear physics. The son of one of the senior engineers, a Philadelphia man by the ironically German name Dietrich, the United States Marine Corp regretfully informs you, has perished in service of his country.

 

There was a picture of the boy, William, on Dietrich’s desk. He was his father’s great pride in life. He had been an English Literature student at Dietrich’s own alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, and had possessed an easy smile and a thick mop of blond hair that was neatly slicked back. He had a young sweetheart who worked at the local hospital, and Dietrich often joked about the extravagant wedding he imagined footing the bill for a few years down the line.  He was an intelligent boy but was bound for the kind of average life that Howard detested, the kind of life filled a pretty wife in a pretty dress, a pretty little children in a neat little line, and a pretty house which only served as gilded cage.

 

Dietrich reads the note out loud in the middle of the office he shared with a dozen of the other engineers and physicists, his usually booming voice cracking. Carefully typed sheets of formulas are dropped on desks. Cigarettes are snuffed. Gazes are cast to the floor. Someone starts praying. Then, soon, a great many someones are praying.

 

No one cries though. Not even Dietrich himself. There is a war going on. They had to remember that fact like a mantra, there is a war going on. There is a war going on. There is a war going on. The best and brightest of America did not have time to mourn the life of a single English student.

 

The two Stark men mumble along from their desks in the back corner. They mumble along quietly. If anyone in this bunker knows that they’re Jewish, they keep their mouth shut. They never mention the rumors that stem from Europe, the faint whisperings of broken glass and empty shells lining the streets of predominantly Jewish neighborhoods or of ghettos where people are herded more like animals than human beings.

 

Instead they simply act the parts they must. And if that means they must mumble along a prayer to a Jewish peasant girl , then well, so be it. After all, Jesus, one of the most influential men the world has ever seen, was a Jew.

  
Although, they did kill him

 

To notice that slight flaw is to admit to their own mortality.

 

-

 

As for the second time Howard Stark is disillusioned with the idea of war, one only needs to open the history books. They say it happened during the winter, something to do with airplanes and brave young men,somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.

 

One should really already know about this one.

 

-

 

It’s the summer of ‘42 when a new woman arrives at Los Alamos, and they say she’s looking for a Howard Stark.

This is, of course, big news. These men spend most of their days surrounded with the same group of people. They work together. They eat together. They sleep in the same quarters, attend the same functions, scratch their heads at the same problems. A woman who is not someone’s disgruntled and somewhat bitter wife is urgent news to be shared with the others at the first opportunity.

 

When the men are finished ogling her from head to patent leather toe, they simply ask which Howard Stark: senior, who is becoming a little bit more batty as the weeks pass without any major progress, or junior, who smokes as if he’s trying replicate all the clouds in the bright blue sky.

 

She shields her eyes from the harsh sun and reads back to some of the brightest men the world has ever seen exactly what is written on her paper, “Stark, Howard Walter Anthony.”

 

The men chuckle and nod knowingly at one another, as if all of this is some kind of private joke.

 

You want the younger one, they tell her. They kick at the ground. The red dust creates little mushroom clouds with every movement of black dress shoes. He’s a bit of a lady killer though. Someone should come with you, protect some of your dignity. You know, in case the Stark boy tries to make a pass at you.

 

She politely turns each one down. She smiles softly and assures them that she will be fine. She doesn’t need them, never did, never would. Women were made of much firmer stuff than men had ever given them credit for.

 

-

 

Howard’s first thought was not how to get her into bed. That came a long, long time later when they were both a little worse for wear.

 

No, at first, Howard thought Margaret Carter was his ticket out of there. She was a breath of fresh air for a man who suffocating. She was, in her green army uniform, a welcome break in the backdrop of red.

 

She came bearing gifts that in that time Howard was convinced were worth their weight in gold. She spread two letters, one from a German doctor lucky enough to escape before Hitler began deportations from major cities and one from Oppenheimer himself approving the transfer from Project Y to the Strategic Scientific Reserve, onto the table. He only need to say the word, and he and Margaret would be on the next available boat to the Italian front.

 

“What kind of business is this SSR of yours into these days?” Howard asks nonchalantly, eyeing Oppenheimer’s signature.    

 

Margaret smiles. “The same kind of business you and I are in, Mr. Stark.”

 

“And what kind of business are we in, Ms. Carter?”  

 

“The business of ending this war.”

 

-

 

His father is a silent watcher as the younger Howard packs his belongings up. Well, the belongings he is taking with him.

 

He leaves behind much more than he takes. He leaves behind his journals and his books and his address book. He leaves behind notes and formulas he spent the better part of a year working on, deeming them “too confidential” to take behind enemy lines. He leaves behind the articles of clothing that the blasted red dirt couldn’t be scrubbed out of.

 

Instead he takes practical things, the kind of practical things he never ever enjoyed while he was in New York. Extra socks and pairs of underwear, his Los Alamos badge and Driver’s License, a copy of a will he recently had drummed up just in case and a set of cufflinks that his mother tucked into his breast pocket the day he left for New Mexico.

 

Howard Stark is beyond luck and God’s intervention, but it never hurts to bring something that reminded him of home.

 

His suitcase is packed, and his hat and his sunglasses are on his head when his father finally says something.

 

“Try not to die, son.”

 

“I’ll do my best.”

 

-

 

It’s the last thing they ever say to each other. The elder Stark dies of a heart attack while his son is once again holed up in a lab, this time in basement of a former Paris hotel.

 

If Howard Stark ever admitted to having regrets, this would be the first in an incredibly long list.

 

-

 

He catches up with Margaret on the first train from Albuquerque to Chicago.

 

“It’s nice to see you again, Mr. Stark,” she says, not looking up from the daily paper. She’s packed light as far as he can see. Nothing but a handbag and a small suitcase are perched on the seat across from her.

 

“Please, call me Howard. Whenever someone says Mr. Stark, I look for my father looming behind me.” He plops himself down before even thinking of asking if the seat was open. All traces of Stark charm were somehow stripped away when he was with her, he would come to find out. She had always been the only one to see him completely laid bare.

 

‘Then,” she offers him a hand to shake, “please call me Peggy.”

 

Both the train and his stomach lurch forward as he grabs her hand, and something tells him that his life was going to be changed the minute this train left the station.

 

“I think, Peggy” he whispers philosophically as the train gains speed, “that is going to be quite an adventure.”  

  


**Author's Note:**

> As always @shehulkings.


End file.
